Pike Landing

Land even large pike safely using your hands and the gill-to-jaw-grip

By Martin Joergensen

	Perfect grip  Kasper Mühlbach

When a big pike or muskie strikes and sticks to your hook, you know you are in for a great experience. These fish are fierce and strong, attack like rockets and almost always put up a good fight.

But once you see that broad neck and those smacking jaws in the surface you may start to wonder: "Why did I do this?"

And sure it can be quite a challenge to get your hands close to the toothy mouth of these often very scary predators. Pike’s mouths are made to hold onto anything that gets in there, and the pike manages to do that by having a lot of teeth. A lot!

A mouth from hell
As you can see on the pictures next to this chapter, a pike indeed does have a lot of teeth. This larger-than-life model of a pike head is located on a Danish museum for fresh water biology, and it very clearly illustrates how the pike has managed to grow teeth almost everywhere.

The jaws have teeth of course. Large ones on the side, smaller ones on the front “lips”. The side ones are the largest and sharpest of the lot, and the ones, which can cut even a steel or brass wire leader. A monofilament leader has little chance if trapped over these teeth, which are sharp as razor blades

	Pike head  Martin Joergensen
	The good old way  Sören Essebo

And the tongue has teeth. Most fish have a rough tongue, but on pike they are like cutters on a shredder: numerous, sharp and all pointed in the same direction: backwards.

Same thing in the roof of he mouth, although the teeth up there are quite a bit larger than the tongue ones. And to make bad worse Mother Nature has also equipped the pike with teeth on the gill rakes, all pointed in towards the mouth.

A trap
If you combine all these teeth with the size and strength of the pike’s mouth and its blazing speed, you have a near perfect fish trap. Once in there, a small fish has nary a chance of escaping. The teeth will easily penetrate any scales or tough skin and will very efficiently hold the fish and transport it towards its destiny: becoming pike food.

Now, if your hand is trapped in there, it’s not likely that you become pike food. You will most likely want to take your hand out. But in doing so, you will inevitably get caught on the teeth and since they both cut and point in the opposite direction of the hand movement, blood will run!

As you have probably guessed already, there’s no lipping of pike!

Teeth!  Martin Joergensen	The reason why  Kasper Mühlbach
Lifting  Kasper Mühlbach	Unhooking  Kasper Mühlbach

	Schematics  Martin Joergensen

The trick is to get your fingers inside the gill slit from under the pike’s mouth and letting them slide up into the triangle between the sides of the lower jaw under the tongue. This area is totally devoid of teeth and there are no teeth on the parts your fingers pass on the way.
If the pike is pointing right you use the right hand and vice versa.
Let your fingertips slip under the gill lid as far towards the front of the fish as possible. It is essential that you only get the fingertips inside. You don’t want to get your fingers in contact with teeth or the gills themselves. And use all four fingers, particularly on larger fish.

The grip is very sure. You can easily hold even big pike with one hand and should the fish start moving – which it only rarely does when it hangs like this – you can control it with little effort. Just relax and let the fish wiggle. Without water as a counterforce it has little strength.

No harm done
It seems that the pike can be held like this without suffering any harm at all.
The lower jaw is rock solid, and very firmly attached to the skull. And the jaw and neck muscles of a pike seem to be strong enough to hold the whole body weight.

No gaffs, no grips I have seen pike landed using large Boca grips, which of course can be an alternative. But honesty: I think the gill-to-jaw-grip is safer and better – and quite a lot less expensive! I have also seen gaffs used, but even though a gaff in theory can enter where your fingers would and hold the fish much like you would with your fingers. But if the gaff has a sharp point, which most gaffs have, there is a very present danger of harming the fish (or yourself) in the process. If you use a gaff for the purpose, you could at least file down the point or mount some ball or a similar object over the tip.

I do not urge you to hold the fish like this for too long, but I’m sure that the short time it takes to lift and unhook a fish before release has no influence at all on the fish. It is under all circumstances better than having the pike flopping around in the bottom of a boat or on a sandy bank with the risk of all kinds of harm – both to the fish and you.

Some pike anglers argue that lifting the pike out of the water in the jaw alone can severely damage and dislocate the jaw. I have personally never seen this happen, but save yourself the possible experience, and always support the fish with both hands when lifting them fully out of the water.

Small fish  Kasper Mühlbach

Pike are extremely robust fish, and unlike most salmonids they seem to take little notice of not being able to breathe. Again I do not endorse holding the fish out of water for minutes on end, but compared to trout and salmon, pike are able to withstand quite some time out of water and still be able to swim right off as soon as they hit water again.

Difficult on smaller fish
The pike grip only has one disadvantage: it’s not that easy to perform on smaller fish. And small pike are in the 1-4 lbs. range or between ½ and 2 kilos.
The reason for this is that even though you only slide your fingertips inside the gill lids, you risk touching gills, gill rakes or teeth.

Since you are dealing with smaller fish, the alternative can be a gentle grip over the neck or simply just supporting the fish under the belly.

Float tube  Poul Volquartzen	Back into the water  Poul Volquartzen

Pliers  Martin Joergensen

Go to article start ^ User comments

From: Scanner · scanner_uu·at·hotmail.com Submitted September 13th 2007 www.nytimes.com/2007/09/12/us/12pike.html?_r=2&ref=science&oref=slogin&oref=slogin Looks a little foolish to be that interested of the pike´s survival if you read the link above! Impossible to get rid of pike from a lake whatever methods used. "more than 500 fish and game personnel began a last-ditch, $16 million effort to rid the lake of pike, the most expensive ever undertaken against an “invasive species” in Califonia" 16 millions dollar to get rid of pike in one lake and you are talking about gill-grips hurting or not??? From: Ad Swier · info·at·adswier.com Submitted February 21st 2007 I've been using the-what we call- gill grip- for years. Only I support the fish under its belly as soon as I have gill-gripped it. That is an important pro, if the fish just hangs at its jaw damage is easily done. Personally I feel this still is the best way to get a pike out safe and sound. Piece of cloth over the eyes helps... Don't forget these beast come from a certain and beautifull silent invironment and now see the compelte crazy world we are living in. I would certainly do the same,, trash around like a nutter. 'Wanna go back, wanna go back!!. Best Ad Swier. From: Rubio Submitted February 20th 2007 When a large pike is lifted by the jaw all the blood rushes to the bottom of the fish and it can basically kill the fish. This goes more for large musky but with a pike the same will happen. This is the reason why, most catches and releases of these big fish's weight are usually stated in inches. Hanging one of them from a weighting hook could kill it. From: Robert · robertevreg·at·yahoo.com Submitted April 5th 2006 Dear Martin, maybe a good method of calming the pike down (when out water) is just covering its eyes.Believe or not, as soon as the eyes are covered with your hand pike calms down completely (have done it myself couple of times and have seen many people doing so) and then easilly you will put the other hand/fingers in the jaw. I like your notes very much, hope to continue with good comments. robert From: mike clark · realworld25·at·hotmail.com Submitted January 25th 2006 Martin Just a wee note of thanks. After trawling through pages and pages of inprecise and vague advice on how to both unhook and hold a pike, I found your page, giving a far more accurate and clearer explanation. I have previously only fished for pike a couple of times a year, using spinning tactics or a wobbled dead bait. However, more recently I have enjoyed pike fishing on a local lake and so am steadily building up my store of tackle and reading all i can about it. I have great respect for any fish i catch and as such i try to handle and unhook pike as best i can without harming them. To this end I often either take excess trebles off lures/spinners or at the very least flatten 2 of the treble hook points to make unhooking easier. The only danger i can envisage with this is that as the point is sharper on the hook it will no doubt bury itself deeper into the pikes mouth, as there is nothing restricting its penetration. From reading your above advice i now have the confidence to hold/unhool a suitably sized pike under the jaw without fear of injuring the fish. Many thanks and kind regards Mike From: Martin Joergensen · martin·at·globalflyfisher.com Submitted December 2nd 2005 Pär, I certainly respect your opinion and I think I have stated fairly clearly in the article that lifting fish out of the water in the jaw is not necessarily the best way of doing things. I have yet to see any visible damage to any fish I have seen handled in this way and I would be very pleased if you could mail me some links with references to the studies about the swallow reflex you mention. As a biologist I would be very eager to read them. Personally I think a campaign against spinning lures with three large treble hooks or the usage of gaffs would be a better way to spend ones energy, but as I said: I respect your opinion... although I might have wished for a kinder and more constructive tone... ;-) Thanks for your valued input anyway. Martin From: Pär "MT" · vinnie10·at·tele2.se Submitted December 1st 2005 Your story above is just bullshit! A big pike or a fat pike will get serious damage if you just lift it in the gill. Studies about this, you can read them here on the Internet if you search! Personaly I´ve noticed that it takes far longer time for the pike to recover, if you lift it in the gill, completely above the water. But the biggest problem is that the swallowreflex will be destroyed if you do so. Best regards /Muskytrackers

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